What's Next For The White House After Bannon's Departure?

23 Agosto 2017

After his ouster from the West Wing on Friday, ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon declared the Trump presidency that his brand of populist, right-wing conservatives helped make a reality is "over".

In the Trump transition, the job was offered to Jason Miller, who accepted before eventually demurring - citing a desire to spend more time with his family. Are you getting the picture? I think a lot of Republican officeholders over the last year have been telling themselves that the president was - that Trump was going to change, that the responsibilities of office would change and that his advisers would change, that there would be a pivot and a change in his entire direction and strategy. The move was delayed, however, after the violence in Charlottesville.

Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Bannon and chief of staff John Kelly, only recently installed himself, had agreed that Friday would be Bannon's last day.

Former Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro predicted Friday on Fox News that Bannon's departure is "going to cause a major rift between Breitbart and Trump".

BOB CORKER: The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.

I'm treating this as confirmation that my hot take was right all along, that Bannon reached the point where he preferred to be martyred by "globalists" than to stick around and share blame for a disappointing presidency. "He actually gets very unfair press in that regard", Trump said earlier this week. "I inherited a MESS and am in the process of fixing it", he tweeted on February 18. It's extraordinary how many people have gone out. The odds of Breitbart News and its allies joining the conservative insurgents is now very, very high. It's because he's displeased the boss in some way. Your values are not American values. "This is gonna be really f***ing bad". We are better than this. "If [Bannon's enemies in the White House] think what's happened with Steve is rough, wait until they see what he does outside the White House".

Also Friday, billionaire investor Carl Icahn said he has ended his role as a special regulatory adviser to Trump after questions were raised about potential conflicts of interests with his business dealings. And we'll see what happens with that. And now I'm about to go back, knowing what I know, and we're about to rev that machine up. Both Stranahan and Cernovich pointed out that these interviews came only days before Trump went to Camp David with his national security team.

SIEGEL: And it wasn't because of much Russia news, either - totally different distractions from policy.

"We gotta help crush it", he said in the interview, which people close to Bannon said he believed was off the record.

BROWN: Why was Steve Bannon let go? And I think that's one of the reasons they've been sputtering - is because they are out of practice in doing that.

Bannon, who left right-wing news site Breitbart to join Donald Trump's campaign in 2016, remained on at the White House as one of the President's most controversial advisers - and the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump's "nationalist" ideology. And I think that the president is still a Bannonist (ph) at heart.

Since then, Kelly has been evaluating Bannon's status, according to the official.

He's more interested in tweeting than he is in governing. Trump said Saturday in one of two tweets.

And you have a much more establishment cast to this White House today.